9/21/2014

A Look at the Expanding Print Market

I have missed a few posts which I rarely do, but had to endure a root canal, and shortly I will have my wisdom teeth extracted. I do not look forward to the next week or two. So between the pain and the drug induced fog I have been, posting and looking for interesting material was not at the top of my agenda.

In any event, the art world moves on, and the NY Times has a very good look at the growing interest and values within the print market.

The NY Times reports

LONDON — “I’m struggling to understand this,” a man said at Sotheby’s here earlier this month as a specialist showed him a masterpiece by one of the world’s most famous artists, priced at just 40,000 pounds.

The overheard would-be bidder was looking at Rembrandt’s 1643 “Three Trees” etching, included in Sotheby’s Sept. 16 sale of prints in London. The specialist had just explained that the presence of a small scratch above a tower in the landscape indicated that this example was a later printing, or “impression,” when the image’s copper plate had become worn. Hence the relatively low estimate.

Sotheby’s doesn’t divulge the identity of its clients, so it was impossible to know whether this gentleman was one of the two telephone bidders who at the sale pushed the price to £50,000, or $81,500, including a buyer’s premium.

Welcome to the esoteric world of print collecting. It’s a field where subtle variations, like “impressions” — particularly in the realm of Old Masters, and especially with Rembrandt — can lead to massive discrepancies in value that mystify anyone new to the field.

Obsessive print collectors have for centuries prized the finest specimens of woodcuts, etchings and engravings that most faithfully express a great artist’s intentions. For example, the Frankfurt-based connoisseur dealer Helmut H. Rumbler is currently offering a pristine early example of “The Three Trees” for about 700,000 euros, or $906,000. Mr. Rumbler paid £434,500 — about €547,000 — for that Rembrandt print at Christie’s in London in December 2013.

“People are prepared to pay big prices for fine impressions in good condition,” said Séverine Nackers, Sotheby’s head of prints in Europe, “but we’re also seeing prints becoming more of an entry-level purchase for new buyers, and established collectors in other fields are noticing how relatively affordable they are.”

Sotheby’s sale, which ranged in works from the 15th to 21st centuries, raised a mid-estimate £4.1 million from 209 lots, a healthy 84 percent of which were successful. These figures might seem paltry compared to the numbers of a Sotheby’s auction of original contemporary works, but Ms. Nackers said that 28 percent of her buyers were new to the company.

In the past, the arcane technicalities of printmaking have intimidated potential clients, turning the field into a niche sector. But now, encouraged by the soaring prices of original art and the availability of images of these prints online, a new international crowd that doesn’t know the difference between etching and drypoint, or mezzotint and lithotint — and isn’t really that bothered — has entered the market.

“These sales have become image-driven,” said the London-based art adviser Patrick Legant, who attended both Sotheby’s auction, and the 192-lot print selection Christie’s offered the following day. “People are attracted by lovely things with art-historical gravitas that are reasonably priced,” he added.

Like Rembrandt, Albrecht Dürer has long been recognized as one of the greatest of all print-makers. Sotheby’s sale opened with 20 of his engravings and woodcuts, including some of his most famous compositions, many of which appeal to contemporary sensibilities. With its estimate of £4,000-£6,000, a posthumously printed “Melencolia I” wasn’t an example for the purists, but the sheer power of the image drew a telephone purchase at £25,000. Three-quarters of the Dürers sold, with a further £50,000 — double the low estimate — given for his 1515 woodcut, “The Rhinoceros.”

It was a similar story the following day at Christie’s when a group of colored lithographs by the French Post-Impressionists Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard attracted a flurry of bidding, including some from Russian speakers manning the phones. Bonnard’s 1896 “La petite blanchisseuse,” showing a laundrywoman peering at a dog in a street, fetched £40,000, just above the high estimate.

“Russians never used to bid on works on paper,” said Mr. Legant, a former Impressionist and Modern art specialist at Sotheby’s. “I was surprised how busy these sales were. Last year they were far more quiet and measured.”

Yet at the more rarefied, top end of the print market, the two houses often struggled. Sotheby’s offered a group of lots by Edvard Munch — one of the most innovative and revered of early Modernist printmakers — from a private Scandinavian collection, estimated to raise more than £1 million. Only four out of the 10 sold, led by a black-and-gray version of the 1899 woodcut, “Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones,” at a within-estimate £290,500.

Christie’s did achieve the same price for the 1911-12 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner woodcut of a female nude, “Akt mit schwarzem Hut,” that had been owned by the highly regarded German collector Jan A. Ahlers. However, a 1912 Kirchner print of sailboats, estimated at £150,000-£250,000, failed to sell, as did a complete set of 10 Andy Warhol 1967 “Marilyn” screenprints, cataloged as being “generally in very good condition.” As a result, Christie’s sale totaled £3.5 million against a low estimate of £4.6 million.

“The Munch print market depends on a very small group of collectors and they already have most of the images they want,” said the London-based works-on-paper dealer Emanuel von Baeyer. “Collectors of German Expressionist prints are in their 70s and 80s now and they’re selling rather than buying.”

But Christie’s did at least have three telephone bidders for Pablo Picasso’s 1958 masterpiece linocut, “Buste de femme d’après Cranach le Jeune,” which topped their sale with a price of £410,500, beating the landmark $657,000 — £403,000 at today’s exchange rates — achieved for another version at Sotheby’s, New York, in May 2008.

Back in 2008, Christie’s took £28 million in auction sales of prints. Last year that figure had risen to £51.8 million. Specialist connoisseur collectors prepared to pay £150,000 for a print might be dwindling, but it seems they’re being replaced by a new breed of “name and image” buyers.

If that is the case, we might just see a narrowing of the gulf in price between a Rembrandt with a scratch in it, and a Rembrandt without.

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The Appraiser Workshops blog was developed in 2008 to publish news connected with the personal property profession and to promote the Appraiser Workshops. Content includes appraisal ideas and tips, industry news and events, market trends and updates, surveys, educational opportunities and general commentary about personal property appraising. Visit often. Comments, news, suggestions and content contributions are always welcome.

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Todd W. Sigety, is a certified member of the International Society of Appraisers and is a partner in the Appraiser Workshop, developers of the Good, Better, "Best" Appraiser Workshop. He owns two Antique galleries in Old Town Alexandria, VA where the workshop is held. He currently serves as the President on the National Board of Directors for the International Society of Appraisers. He is also the creator and editor of the Journal of Advanced Appraisal Studies.

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